I was about 30 seconds late for hall duty - my class had run over by a couple of minutes and I needed to secure the machine shop where I taught. When I got to my "post" near the cafeteria, I saw someone sitting in a folding chair in the parking lot outside the building. It was snowing lightly. It was one of the Driver's Ed teachers, and he had a light jacket draped over him. The jacket covered the knife that was stuck in his back just below the left scapula. He was waiting for the ambulance while a couple of colleagues tried to keep him calm.
I bring this up in light of the recent calls for arming teachers, locking down schools, and somehow keeping everybody safe from the pervasive violence in our desperately ill society.
The incident occurred a long time ago in a Chicago suburb. Our school had an armed police officer. Our students had to enter and exit only through designated doors. We had full time hall monitors, The students had to show their IDs to enter the building, and upon demand by staff. Any backpack or bag a student carried had to be a see-through variety. All teachers had to perform 1/2 period of hall duty every day. None of this security prevented a student from bringing a stolen knife to school and attacking a teacher for giving him a failing grade.
Security didn't prevent this assault. Society didn't prevent this assault. A kid who was frantic and obviously short in the planning department somehow believed that he would solve some truly insurmountable personal problem by committing an act that guaranteed him housing in a jail. How desperate is that?
How desperate are we to think that we can solve the problems of society by focusing on symptoms and not causes?
The teacher was not gravely injured - at least not physically.
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